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Kyary Pamyu Pamyu

Kyary Pamyu Pamyu live in London 2015

This year’s Kyary Pamyu Pamyu concert in London coincided with the Moshi Moshi Nippon Festival. The festival was held in the day time and the concert started at 8 pm.

Moshi Moshi Nippon Festival 2015

The festival opened a few hours before the concert at the Roundhouse in London, with a few stalls showcasing different food and products from Japan. As an added bonus, the original dress from Kyary Pamyu Pamyu’s music video Fashion Monster, was on display for everyone to see.

Some of the other stalls were marukome×MOSHI MOSHI NIPPON and Kawaii & Oishii. Appearing on a ministage was a j-pop group called Musubizm, who performed for the public and later on took photos with their fans.

This year’s festival had free admission, which was great for those who just wanted to see the festival in the day time, but didn’t have any tickets to the actual concert in the evening.

After the festival we headed into London, to visit some of our favourite Japanese shops, and to get a bite to eat.

The venue

We joined the queue outside the Roundhouse around 19.15. The queue was very long, but moved quite fast. It was fun seeing so many different sorts of people had turned up for the concert. Of course, lots of Japanese people, cosplayers and lolitas dressed as Kyary, and more.

Before we knew it we were inside the venue, heading upstairs to find our seats. The concert was held at the Roundhouse in London this year, and had both seating and standing. We chose seating this year, which was fine. The only thing I would have liked to change about it was the supporting beams for the roof that were somewhat in the way of the view sometimes.

The show started promptly at 8pm and the crowd went mad when Kyary Pamyu Pamyu appeared on stage.

The show – Crazy Party Night

This year’s show was seat up with a theme around a night at a night club called Crazy Party Night. Joining Kyaryu Pamyu Pamyu on stage were her dancers and her very own DJ who kept the music going all night and playing music for the dancers and entertainment between costume changes.

The stage differed quite a lot from the previous two London concerts, this time the stage was given a more grown up theme with a DJ booth, compared to last time with toys. The stage felt like it has grown with her now that she is old enough to drink and go clubbing.

Kyary played a lot of her new songs this year, but also mixed in all her hit songs from her past albums. Something they did a little bit different this year with one of the tracks, Candy Candy, was to remix part of the song with other music, giving Kyary a chance to really get the crowd going, which we all enjoyed.

The show ended, as all Kyary’s shows have ended in London, with Chan Chaka Chan Chan, with the exception that this time there were lots of confetti shot out over the public.

Trying to pick out which of the songs was my favourite from the concert is always going to be hard, but I did enjoy Candy Candy and one of my favourites – Fashion Monster.

Moshi Moshi Tokyo App

Kyary Pamyu Pamyu is the go-to person when it comes to all things popular in Tokyo these days with this new app Moshi Moshi Tokyo that has just been released in the iOS app store. It’s available for both iPhone and iPad, but not Android as of yet. I think it is great for those that might like to have a guide book in a regular book size and then just having it on an iPhone or iPad screen is a big bonus. The app is available in three languages, English, French and Japanese. Kyary puts on her guide uniform and is ready to be your personal guide to all her favorite places around Tokyo. You’ll find a mixture of places to see and shops to visit, plus more.

Moshi Moshi Tokyo Guide book

Moshi Moshi Tokyo is also the name of her guidebook that has been available for some time now, but is sadly only available in Japanese. But it can still be a great buy, just for the pictures alone. We got our copy of the book from cdjapan.co.jp and we found it quite a cheap buy. But now that the app is here – and in English, I’m sure next time we are heading to Tokyo we will have it loaded up to our iOS devices without a doubt.

The App

Once you have downloaded the app and you have opened it, you come to the library section where you get to chose what language you want to download. Note that it is only in English and French at the moment. I’m guessing that they will add Japanese later on. Here I clicked to download the English version. As stated in the App Store infomation about the app, you’re only getting a sample of the book, which allows you to read up to the first half of Harajuku station. In the future I’m guessing that you will either be able to download the rest of the book via the app library in sections at a set price, or maybe you will be able to download the book in its entirety, once it becomes available. The price and how the book will be available has yet to be announced.

App VS. Book

The app is a copy of the book, but I think between the app and the book is the interactive side to the app that somewhat wins over the book. Of course, that it is in English is great too. The interactive bits I’ve seen of the book so far are clickable boxes that pop up with more info about certain things (i.e. price of her uniform and more), rolling banners of what Kyary thinks of a certion shops, google map links to where the particular shop is located and more.

Final Thougts

I think if the pricing is right for the rest of the book I’m sure it will be a great success. I’m sure even if you’re not going to Tokyo you might end up buying just for all the stuff with Kyary Pamyu Pamyu in it. If you are going to visit Tokyo it might be a great read on the plane trip there, helping you to decide where to visit first once you get to Tokyo. The only negative thing I can think of with the app is that all the pricing, shop locations, opening times for different places are as of 2012, which since then might have changed, moved or even shut down, so it would be great if they could do a bit of an update to the information. If you’re unsure, it might be a good idea to do a quick check on the web to see if that place or shop you want to go to is still there.

The app is available from the app store now via the button below or search for moshi moshi tokyo in the iTunes store.

Check our other posts on Kyary Pamyu Pamyu via this link or use the tag Kpp or Kyary Pamyu Pamyu in search box on the left.

Kyary Pamyu Pamyu – Live in London 2014

We made our way to the O2 Empire Shepherds Bush a couple of hours before the show. We knew it would take a long time to get there because of a major tube strike in most parts of London. We managed to jump on a very cramped bus that would take us over to Shepherds Bush. We seemed to be stuck on that bus forever, passing a lot of stops where other KPP fans were waiting to get on a bus that wasnt full already. I hope they got there in the end.

Making our way there

We arrived in time and not thinking about the queues that might be outside the venue we got a bite to eat. Fed and happy we found our way over to the venue. We had to walk to the end of a very long line to get in, all the way round to the back of the venue, queuing along a residence street. There were two queues going separate ways, one for for the stalls and one for standing. In the queues we saw several girls dressed up to mimic Kyary Pamyu Pamyu’s many outfits from her music videos. There were also lots of girls dressed in Lolita clothes and people dressed in other alternative styles. It was a real mixture of people, teens, adults and families with young children. One thing that we all had in common was the love for KPP and her music.

It wasn’t that bad to wait, not compared to last year’s show, where we were had to stand outside in cold rain and snow. At least this time the weather was nice and it was quite warm outside. Everyone was in high spirits as the queues started to move to the doors around 19ish. In no time at all our tickets had been checked and we were in.

Inside the venue

Inside they sold t-shirts, hoodies and scarfs. But we didn’t stop for that, as we were on our way up to the first level to find some seats, because it the tickets were unspecified. We were luckily enough to grab two seats next to one another on the back row with a great view. Most of all the other seats where occupied before we got there and the people that came in after us either had to split up or got standing places, which in a way was good to because there you could dance if you felt like it. Then we waited, with the other 2200 in the sold out venue, for the show to start.

The show

The stage was much more advanced than the previous concert Kyary performed in London. Last time she said she wanted to come back again with a more lavish show, and she kept her promise. The stage was designed as a children’s playroom with storybooks, bulding blocks, popcorn and a big teddy bear. The style suited her perfectly. She also had a large screen on stage, where a video was played during one of the breaks and outfit changes.

Kyary treated us to a show packed with hits like Hitachi, Candy Candy and Tsukematsukeru. The crowd cheered, sang and danced throughout the show, and when she sang the hits Fashion Monster and PonPonPon so it was clear that Kyary Pamyu Pamyu has a very strong fan base in UK.

–

Last time Kyary performed in London she only spoke Japanese during the show, and an interpreter translated what she said. But this time she had no interpreter with her. Instead, she spoke a little English, using notes written down on a piece of paper which she read aloud from. She also spoke some Japanese this time too, and judging by the reations of the audience it seemed like most understood what she was saying.

During the show, she wore four different outfits: first she was wearing some kind of furry creation, then she switched to a cute pink dress and bow in her hair. Another change of clothes and now she had a different color of her dress, and an even bigger bow in her hair. The final change of outfit was when she was cheered back on stage again, and now she wore a teeshirt, a skirt and bunny ears. In addition to doing a few more songs, she took the opportunity to have her picture taken with her dancers, and with the audience in the background.

The last song of the evening was Chan Chaka Chan Chan, a perfect song to end the show, with the lyrics going “see you, see you, see you again. See you, see you, see you next time.”

Quick Japan magazine

Quick Japan magazine is a youth culture magazine that comes out on bi-monthly basis. The magazine features lots of articles on the music scene in Japan and the whole magazine, which resembles the looks of a book, is in Japanese.

The main reason why I bought the magazine was because Quick Japan Vol. 107 had a huge feature on the Kyary Pamyu Pamyu 2013 tour she did in Europe, with a loads of great photos from the tour, and pictures of Kyary Pamyu Pamyu walking around the streets of Paris while fiming a part of her TV show “TV John”.

So if you’re a Kyary Pamyu Pamyu fan, this a great magazine to add to your collection! I purchased my copy online from cdjapan for 900yen, plus postage.

I also see now thats there’s an app in the Japanese iTunes app store where you can buy the magazine from as well.

Here below are a couple of the pages that can be found in this issue of Quick Japan.

Kyary Pamyu Pamyu World tour 2014

Kyary Pamyu Pamyu has just published her world tour dates for this year. After her world tour last year (which was a success, with tickets selling out for shows in London and New York) I’m sure that this time the tickets will sell out just as fast or even faster, in line with her becoming more and more popular around the world.

The Tour

This year her world tour will start off with shows in the US, with five shows dotted around the states, and then a show over in Canada. She is also playing a bunch of shows around in Europe – UK, France and Germany. Same as last time, but at different venues. This time the venues in Europe will be bigger ones than her last shows, so now more people will get to see her. Which is great for all those that missed out last time she toured in this part of the world.

This tour is said to be an even more engaging and exciting event than her foreign dates from last year. What I would love to see is more of a setup, like she has on her Japanese parts of her tours, with lots of dancer and costume changes and big stages. But of course that would be costly to transport all of that over the world, so maybe it would take a trip to Japan if I wanted to see that. With her new album that came out last year (our review from the album is here: Nanda Collection) I think we will get to hear lots of songs from the new album, and of couse songs from her early stuff. Im sure when and where ever you see KPP, it will be a great show.